Music Industry Aims for Transparency Through Blockchain

One of the largest full-service blockchain technology company in the world The Bitfury Group has announced, via a blog post, the launch of a music and entertainment division which will create an open-source music platform secured by the bitcoin blockchain. The company is valued at US$1 billion

The platform christened Bitfury Surround intends to introduce interoperability and transparency to the industry to encourage collaboration and promote innovation within the industry and also address the unfairly proportioned flows of revenue between artists and intermediaries using blockchain technology. The music industry is notoriously opaque.

“The music entertainment industry has evolved into a complex, competitive, technology-driven environment that suffers from a severe lack of transparency. We want to champion artists and help incentivize the growth of the entire industry through the creation of this open, blockchain-based ecosystem” said Valery Vavilov, CEO of Bitfury.

“The Surround platform will enable the entire music entertainment industry to streamline operations through a secure transfer of copyright assets, streamlined connectivity as well as better monitoring and management systems,” the blog post said.

The Surround ecosystem will be built on Bitfury’s Exonum open-source blockchain platform. The open platform will create a digital system for sharing and monetizing intellectual property and level the playing field for all shareholders.

“There is very strong momentum for an open entertainment-related blockchain where market participants themselves would be participating in the market venue, not only from a transactional value point of view,” comments Stefan Schultz, CEO of Bitfury Surround. Schultz has twenty years of experience in the music and entertainment industry.

“Music is perhaps the most powerful currency in today’s world driven by emotions, globalization, and volatility in consumer behavior. Yet, the overall value of the music market is lower than in the late 1990s. Blockchain technology, complemented by Artificial Intelligence, will reverse this dramatic development and enable an age of exponential and sustainable growth in the whole industry,” added Schulz

The Bitfury Surround business division will be based in Europe, with initial operations in Amsterdam and Berlin. Other services are reported to be in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Seoul, and Moscow. Bitfury was founded in 2011 and is presently based in London. They sell gear used to mine cryptocurrencies and develops blockchain technology for clients including the Ukrainian government. The company also designs and produces innovative hardware that keeps cryptocurrencies and blockchains secure, including custom semiconductor chips and mobile data centers.